Asia-Pacific overtakes Europe on the rich list

[Musicwhiz]

This is newsworthy for at least a few reasons:

- It's a data point in whether or not you think govt's economic policies are successful. The fact that the upper middle class is benefiting together with classes that are benefiting less.
- The fact that there're more rich people in Asia-Pacific than the Europe, even though GDP & GDP per capita in Europe are much higher, and that lots of rich people in Asia-Pacific don't declare their full wealth.
- Trading and finance have been Singapore's sources of prosperity for 150+ years.

It brings us difficult questions: how does Singapore be relevant to them (even when more of us are better in English than Chinese or Bahasa)? One way is encourage them to buy apartments or deposit in banks, but that drives up property prices and hurts savers. Another way is to grow tourism with car races & integrated resorts, but that causes traffic jams & social problems.

So, following up on your observations, my comments are:-

1) So is the Govt really doing a good job? Showcasing how many more millionaires there are on this little red dot seems rather pointless when the Gini Coefficient keeps getting wider. The middle income (in my opinion) still struggles to break free from the classic "middle-class prison" while the rich get richer and the poor get poorer.

2) The abundance of wealth over in Asia can be traced to China's boom (and to a lesser extent, India as well), and is also a direct result of USA and Europe's troubles which have seen Governments there scrambling to print more money or adopt tougher austerity measures.

3) I don't think it's only trading and finance. Yes entrepot trade was what made Singapore prosperous due to our unique location serving East and West back in the 19th Century, but right now we are big on pharmaceuticals, electronics and manufacturing.

I also feel that property prices will carry on increasing and bring more hardship to the common folk, while social problems have yet to fully manifest itself. Sigh, it's potentially problematic but I don't see any immediate solutions.